Mika Sasaki
Juror of the Preliminary Round, NGIPC 2023
Pianist Mika Sasaki is an imaginative and versatile soloist, chamber musician, and educator whose performances and teaching have taken her to the U.K., Italy, Japan, Switzerland, and throughout the U.S. Her debut album, Obsidian: Mika Sasaki plays Clara Schumann, released on Yarlung Records in 2016, was highly acclaimed by the Online Merker as “illuminat[ing] the artistic inspiration and creative exchange between three Romantic souls,” Clara Schumann, Robert Schumann, and Johannes Brahms. Her performances have been broadcasted on WQXR, WFMT, All Classical Portland, and Radio Sweden. She has appeared as concerto soloist with the Sinfonia of Cambridge (U.K.), New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, 92Y Orchestra, and more recently, with the InterSchool Symphony Orchestra of New York, performing Amy Beach’s Piano Concerto in February 2019.
Mika is the pianist of the multi-genre sextet Ensemble Mélange and appears regularly with the Chameleon Arts Ensemble in Boston, Manhattan Chamber Players, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, and with her duo partners. Together with violinist Becky Anderson as the Anderson-Sasaki Duo, she presented interactive performances at schools and community venues around Chattanooga, TN, for a residency with String Theory at the Hunter (2022) as well as in Portland, OR, for a three-year residency with Chamber Music Northwest (2022-2025). Her festival appearances include Tanglewood, Chigiana, Taos, Yellow Barn, Aspen, Focus!, Icicle Creek, Mannes Beethoven Institute, Caramoor, Shandelee, Weekend of Chamber Music, and Central Vermont Chamber Music Festival, and she has been invited to teach and perform at pianoSonoma, Rushmore, Omaha Conservatory SoundWaves, Taubman Piano Festival, WCYO Charles Ives Music Festival, Summer Performing Arts with Juilliard in Geneva, Switzerland, and Music@Menlo, where she will continue as Chamber Music Institute faculty in 2023.
Mika is an alumna of the Peabody Conservatory (B.M., M.M.), Ensemble Connect—a two-year fellowship program of Carnegie Hall, Juilliard, and the Weill Institute, in partnership with the NYC Department of Education—and The Juilliard School (D.M.A.), where she was a two-year recipient of the Juilliard Career Advancement Grant upon graduation. Her teachers have included Benjamin Pasternack, Gilbert Kalish, and Joseph Kalichstein.
Based in New York City, Mika is a faculty member at The Juilliard School, where she supervises the secondary piano department in the College Division and teaches keyboard skills, piano, and chamber music in the College, Pre-College, and Extension Divisions. When not at the piano, she can be found tending to her houseplants, hiking, or chasing after her cat. mikasasaki.com